Working in an Ice Box

My office is cold. I'm not talking about, "there's a fat lady that sits by the thermostat" cold. I mean my office doesn't have a thermostat.

Our company moved to a new building in June. The design office was to be built in the warehouse section of the building. I guess to give us our own space and so the design department could be treated like a separate entity. So, from June to September me and Stoner worked in the front offices (where they have a thermostat and a heating/cooling unit). When our offices were finished ( in the Fall) we moved into our space.

Somehow in the planning and building phase of this new office, they never planned on any kind AC/Heating ducts... nothing. As Fall turned to Winter, of course our office got colder. The fancy offices where Carl, Carl Jr., Spring, Connie and Don Johnson work are all cozy. So what do they care if we're uncomfortable?

About a month ago we had a job that needed to be printed on a tight deadline. The large format printers are in the warehouse section of the building (like our design office). Well, when it was time for the job to run on the printer it got messed up bad. It seems the inks in the large format printer (that costs ten thousand dollars at least) were frozen. Literally frozen. When the tech came into look at it he said, "You know, it's way too cold in here for this machine".

Then Carl gets some heating guys to come in. I get all giddy like a boy on Christmas (which was just about the timing of it all). But my joy was not long lived as the local township inspector stopped by. The inspector informed Carl that he didn't have permits for this, he handed Carl a $2000 fine and stopped all work until the proper permits were received (which of course, would have to go through the angered inspector).

I do have a little space heater at my desk which keeps my man parts from shattering into tiny icicles and by lunch time I can take my coat, hat and gloves off.

Today when I got into my car and it said 9º (That's a friggin' single digit!). When I got into the office I thought I'd snap a pic (below) of the tiny keychain thermometer I keep at my desk. If you can't tell, that's right around 45 degrees.

One last bit. It makes it worse when Carl takes our little space heater in the mornings to keep his loafers toasty in his UNbearable 68 degree office. Today he comes in and says, "Oh, did you need the heater?".

I just laughed a couple of breathes of frozen air and said, "yeah, that'd be nice."

Foot note: OSHA recommends temperature control in the range of 68-76° F , but there are no regulations.